"Rethinking Education" Ch. 10 Reflection

In today's generation students rely on and use technology for almost everything, including education, personal interests, communication, and the list goes on. Chapter 10 of our text recaps the entire book in one chapter. This chapter pulls all of the main ideas and concludes the book by stating how technology impacts us as educations, as well as our future students. The chapter first recaps why technology is important in learning. Technology is being used in a way to help our students learn by using games, and we present our information using SMARTboards in the classroom. Distance education is also becoming more and more popular among students. Distance learning gives students the ability to interact with students from across the world on common interests. Technology gives people the ability to be lifelong learners, where education is not complete after the 12th grade making it possible to learn throughout your lifetime. Technology gives students the option for non-traditional schooling such as home schooling. People are able to be learners in the workplace learning where technology is used to train and educate employees throughout their career. Businesses are turning to virtual games where the employees are given different situations with virtual customers. Technology gives people the motivation to learn what they want and what they are interested in. Students are being encouraged to explore their interests for themselves and take control of their learning. By students taking control of their own learning, they are preparing themselves for their future careers. Students are able to focus on areas that will benefit them in the future as employees.

This book has opened my mind has influences me to think outside of the box. Prior to learning this book I had thought that educating our future students should be done in the same manner as I was taught growing up. I have come to realize that although I feel as if there are some areas of education where technology should be drifted away from, many and most of the areas of education should use technology. In the next generation of workers, almost all of their careers will be focused on or around technology. Students should be comfortable with using technology and should be up to date with the current technology. As teachers we also need to stay updated. Since technology is always changing and improving, we as educators need to be educated as well. Although I now see many pros to using technology, I still stick by some of my feeling about technology. I believe that students need to know communication skills. This generation of students is depending on technology to communicate, using social networking sites such as facebook, myspace, and twitter. As educators, we need to stress the importance of face to face communication as well as make sure students master some of the "old school" ways of education, such as penmanship and reading out of a textbook. There are many opinions about using technology in education, and there is no correct answer to this issue, but whatever it is that makes you feel like you are doing the best possible job as an educator is the method you should stand by.